; I'
text must be thirty feet at le a s t; the colours of the
letters follow each other in this order— white, green,
yellow, slate, blue, red, and dark indigo.*
Twenty yards on there are two small flat houses in a
garden of their own, where the road turns inwards a
little, and the path passes away into a wide and well-kept
road, fringed on either side by green plantations overhanging
adobe walls. A hundred yards later a common
is reached, which the Ling-kor encloses by making a
sharp right-angled turn at the opposite side of it. Strictly
speaking, the pilgrim should throughout his circumam-
bulation keep to the actual track,' but the slant across
the common which cuts the corner is suspiciously well
worn. Another point at which a deviation is apparently
made is in the omission of that part of the Ling-kor
which goes outside the Lu-kang. Here my syce met an
old friend whom he had known in Gangtok in former
days, and though she was obviously off the main route,
she still assured Tsering that she was performing the
ceremonial circuit. After all, your Tibetan is a very
human person.
A quarter of a mile further on the road, still running
* This is the sacred sequence, and I was glad to find in this classical example
in Lhasa corroboration of the frequent notes that I had made on the way up ;
the cover of this book bears the famous mantra. I t is to be noted that the
colouring of the last symbol but one carefully distinguishes between the D and
the M of which it is composed, the upper symbol D belonging strictly to the
previous syllable p a ; the colouring of the vowel sound E above it indicates
the relationship of the vowel to the under-written M, both being tinted red.
The Lamaic tradition attaches considerable importance to the proper distincton
of the vowels of this great formula.
This difference in colour between the D and the vowel mark above it is in this
case almost the only remaining proof that there ever was an M a t all, for the whole
of the rock a t this most holy point has been worn into the most gigantic " cup-
mark ” in the world. There is a smooth, worn hole three or four feet in depth
and height and five feet in length, from or into which the pious either throw,
or take, a pebble, for the dust of it is accounted miraculous in its efficacy for
diseases of both soul and body.